babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.

Protest NATO/G8 Summit - May 2012 - Chicago

Comments

Private global finance and affiliated corporate powers have acquired undemocratic control over our common Earth, over peoples, and governments because the world has given private bankers special power to create money out of thin air by writing 'deposit' in their ledgers and 'loan' in government currencies.

Bankers have used that power to change laws at every level of government, and internationally, to give them more power.

"rabble.ca is a public, independent, progressive news and information source. In defining itself as "progressive," rabble.ca embraces a pro-human rights, pro-feminist, anti-racist, queer-positive, anti-imperialist and pro-labour stance, and as such encourages discussions which develop and expand progressive thought."- Babble Policy.

I don't see the words 'left-wing' here. Rebecca West is wrong when she said "this is a left-wing site",

True but most progressives are left of center and all the moderators here are leftists. I usually leave the moderators to their own business and try to stay out of commenting about them as such, however this one time I will... As you (should) know possession is 9/10s of the law. As such leftist like M Spector get way more leeway when it comes to stretching the rules for insults and such. That is why he gets warning after warning (and he does) and others (rightfully so in some cases) get banned after only one or two warnings. He would have to really run amuck, much more than you would, to get banned here. Is it fair, perhaps not, but like most everything else in life it's just the way it is.

I just picture everyone here as Muppet characters; M Specter is Oscar.

As for this post a good friend of mine is a City of Chicago firefighter... I'll be seeing him soon and I'll get his perspective on what is going on this week when I meet him. Should be interesting.

apologies and change of behaviour by M.Spector and moderators, and other babblers who allow unjustice here, is necessary.

On the CBC radio news I heard that G8 leaders were still debating whether stimulus was needed, along with austerity, and couldn't believe that, given "the leaders of 11 international organizations- including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization issued a joint statement warning about the social and economic risks of austerity programs"p.5 CCPA Alternative Federal Budget, March 2012.

Spending for social programs, jobs, and environmental care, reducing climate change and preventing depression, along with other measures are important and necessary.

Governments which issue their own fiat currency, as the governments of the EU do collectively through the European Central Bank, as Canada does, as the US and many other states do, have no contraint in issuing currency.

In fact the more Euros or Canadian dollars etc. issued by governments, the more the private sector, including households, and businesses, and the public sector- lower tier governments, benefit. Jobs are created, important public services and environmentally-protective services are retained. Austerity is destructive, altogether, particularly in a recession, which is now a depression in some places. Austerity only cuts government services to privatize them, to add to private bankers' already grossly disproportionate profit.

Furthermore, banks themselves have power to create government fiat currency, so their whining with nonsense about a 'crisis' that would occur if some of their outstanding loans defaulted is total nonsense.

There is no 'Eurozone crisis': There is no 'debt crisis'. The ECB can continue issuing needed currency, in any event. So can Harper, Obama, and other governments creating currency.

Restrictions also include an outer perimeter extending 10 - 30 miles around Chicago. All aircraft violating flight restrictions will be intercepted. The advisory states:

"The United States Government may use deadly force against the airborne aircraft, if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat."

"Be advised that noncompliance with the published may result in the use of force."

Violators face criminal penalties. For three days, no-fly zone enforcement extends from Lake County, IN to Lake County, IL. It includes Cook and DePage Counties as well as portions of Lake Michigan.

O'Hare and Midway Airports are affected. So are small suburban ones. Around a dozen overall face restrictions. When Obama arrives, he'll be well protected downtown. So will other heads of state and their entourages.

What no NORAD stand-downs for maximum chaos? he he That's right this isn't any funny bizness as per 9/11/01. All of the lead warmongers are in town for 4 o'clock tea and to talk war, and so there must be security up the wazoo.

"Canadian officials in NATO, formerly perceived as diplomatic, multilateral bridge-builders, are now recognized within NATO as North American badgers who berate their European counterparts for not following lockstep behind the United States. The fractures between the NATO member states are points wehre peace actvists can pressure their respective governments to reject warfare and disassemble the institutions of war including NATO. NATO is mortally susceptible to peace activists prying its interstate fractures open.."

"Public outrage grows during the NATO Summit in Chicago, US over the military alliance's involvment in bloody conflicts, deaths, destructions and immunity to face war crimes, on top of the financial costs it inflicts on member states' tax payers.."

"The European missile shield is up and running, says NATO Secretary General Fogh Rasmussen, who announced its 'interim' capability' to shoot down incoming missiles. Earlier Russia voiced strong concern over the issue. NATO continues to insist that the shield is not aimed at Russia..."

I'm very sad, and angry, about ongoing NATO aggression, in the US and elsewhere, and ongoing refusal of babblers (M.Spector and Robo) to continue babbling away without one word of a disclaimer or apology for Lenin's massacres of civilians.

Beyond that, rabble/babble, sponsors and participants have to be clear in rejecting praise of Lenin's attacks on civilians, because it undermines all the good work for peace and justice that rabble/babble and affiliates do. The site, sponsors, and participants are seen by the world as hypocrites, so your message isn't taken seriously by the majority of the public. Because the work of rabble isn't taken seriously then, nor the work of sponsors and their linked groups, which represent to a large degree the advocates for change towards peace and justice in Canada and elsewhere, those efforts are set back. Repeatedly. It's another reason why goals aren't being achieved.

In effect, rabble/babble, its participants, sponsors and affiliates, babbling merrily on without clarifying the distinction between Lenin's words and behaviour, are acquiescing with an effective tool of the financiers and war-mongers- denial of historic war crimes, resulting in marginalization of current movements for change, which is exactly what the current financiers and war-mongers want.

"Three activists in Chicago for the NATO Summit protests - Bryan Church, Jarred Chase, Brent Betterly - are being charged with a major terrorist plot and 'material support for terrorism', after they posted a video of police threatening the three with violence during the NATO summit.."

"Today, NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago to discuss the future of Afghanistan. The talks are being billed as discussions of plans to end the war. The war in Afghanistan is not ending. These talks are simply financing the next phase of the war.."

I'm very sad, and angry, about ongoing NATO aggression, in the US and elsewhere, and ongoing refusal of babblers (M.Spector and Robo) to continue babbling away without one word of a disclaimer or apology for Lenin's massacres of civilians.

No mention of Black '47, either. And nary a peep about the massacres and ethnic cleansings at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649? Tsk tsk.

-if an individual or group is referencing the name of an individual responsible for mass murder, yet also actively promoting that mass murderer's ideas, the distinction between words and behaviour ought to be clearly made.

---

Malalai Joya said in her video linked above that we ought to protest NATO's continuing criminal behaviour and occupations in poor countries.

Dennis Kucinich, in the link above, says, "NATO is a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action. By hiding behind the claim that the organization provides for "common defense,' NATO allows us to wage wars of choice under the guise of international peacekeeping. The most recent example was the unconstitutional war in Libya where NATO, operating under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians, instead backed one side in a civil war and pursued a policy of regime change." and,

"NATO continues to circumvent the authority of the United Nations and to provoke other nations."

Kucinich says NATO was founded as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union, which no longer exists; NATO is an anachronism and should be dismantled.

I agree with these statements. Babblers and groups who continue to praise, or silently accept praise of, one of the mass murderers of the Soviet Union without clearly rejecting that person's behaviour, fall into a trap of justifying NATOs ongoing existence.

SlumberJack said he often critiqued Soviet mass murderers, and Hitler, and wasn't 'rounded up for questioning here' like i am. Why? Because I also ask that everyone help in critique when Lenin or Hitler is praised, and that those who praise some of the ideas of Lenin clearly reject his mass murdering actions?

Thomas Ponniah said that Social Forum organizers work to ensure those directly affected speak to issues, and I agree, however those directly affected aren't always present when statements needing critique are made. Malalai Joya, quoting Martin Luther King, said that 'there are times when silence becomes betrayal'.

Yes, I think anyone found supporting the installation of a Leninist style red terror regime here in Canada would have a lot of explaining to do...notwithstanding the fact that the something quite similar to the white terror has been running amuck in and out of the Western controlled hemispheres for many generations, and continues to do so. Other than that I fail to see any correlations between Canadian style social democrats and Leninism, leaving me somewhat baffled as to what exactly people need to start apologizing for.

ETA: Also, anyone on a mission to out modern day Leninists and have them apologize would do well to begin their campaign here:

whether people self-identify to be social democrats, socialists, communists, anarchists, progressives, Occupy movement activists, or whatever, if they are present when someone or group is praising a mass murderer without stating disagreement with behaviour, they ought to critique unqualified praise and request clarification.

Well, I still don't understand. What do any of those affiliations have to do with Leninism...or Stalinism...or Nazism etc. Is that the same thing as saying all Muslims ought to denounce and critique extreme acts carried out by a fanatic insurgent, as if by inference there is a collective guilt that needs addressing? How about requiring all Jews everywhere to apologize for and critique Israeli occupation? How about requiring all progressive organizations comprising a public demostration to collectively apologize to the general Canadian public if someone throws a brick through a window?

if anyone is present when fanatic violent acts, occupations, and brick-throwing are praised or occur, those behaviours ought to be critiqued.

[edited; some are]

--

The G8 and NATO, including Harper, need to be critiqued for failing to provide for the human rights of civilians.

Human rights include our rights to social services.

It's interesting that Harper gave over a hundred billion dollars to banks a couple years ago, yet hasn't created sufficient money to support our human rights and a clean environment.

"three of Canada’s biggest banks, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC, received estimated peak support that at some point was equal or greater than the value of the company itself. That is to say that at some point during the financial crisis, it would have cost less money for the Canadian and U.S. governments to have bought every single share in these companies rather than providing them with support." (www.progressive-economics.ca, MacDonald,April30.)

G8 leaders ought to create money, spend, to support UN General Assembly-led peacekeeping where necessary, rather than aggression, support conflict resolution rather than war-mongering, to support humanitarian aid, at home and elsewhere, for public housing, healthcare, education, water, local food, welfare, full employment, equality, other human rights, green public energy, taxes on carbon emissions, financial transaction taxes, proportional representation, transformed trade, and other laws to care for humans and our common planet.

Leigh try to get into this millennium some time soon please. The crimes of assholes from 50 and 60 years ago are historic. By the way when was the last time you spoke out against King Charles and Marie Antoinette and the Romanov's. I presume that you go into all the MSM sites and talk about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of FN's and the slave trade every time someone talks about America's founding fathers. [that was sarcasm]

Please post some of your thoughts on the violence of America and NATO in the last decade. Get with the times and stop beating that worn out Cold War drum. This is a thread about protests in 2012 against NATO, the military imperialist project that spends over 70% of the world's arms budget.

I read at babble once that people could read elsewhere, even at rabble, and comment here even though there's space under each article.

to keep thoughts together,

beyond M.Spector's (and others') errors, in the last comment under the recent article by Seth Klein on 'de/growth', Spector said that if people didn't control or own 'capital', by which I guess s/he means 'means of production', then problems result.

In Canada, we do own the currently-used means of production of money/ fiat currency, the Bank of Canada. The federal government also has a Constitutional right to spend currency directly, without using the Bank of Canada, and with fiat currency it's not like there have to be gold bars in storage anywhere.

Would it cause problems if private banks also have a legal right to create government currency through the (commercial) Bank Act?

If fiat currency can be created by the federal government to meet people's and earth's needs, and if we pressure them to create that money, I guess it shouldn't matter if private banks also have the power to create fiat currency, as long as they don't lobby to stop the federal government from creating money at zero interest or spending directly. Apparently the usual argument of 'inflation' doesn't apply when there is so much unemployment.

The only 'test', to see if it is necessary to advocate for curtailing the power of private banks to create government currency, is to see if banks continue to abuse their power; if banks and their officials continue to talk about a 'requirement' for government cuts, or if banks begin to lobby for financial transactions taxes, separation of finance/insurance/real estate, and publicly support extensive government creation of money in this recession/depression.

NATO has acted, perhaps unwittingly, as the arm of private bankers' - in Libya for example, someone at babble gave evidence that one of the first demands of 'demonstrators' was to privatize Libya's central bank. That's not the first thing demonstrators usually demand, suggesting those with interests in private banking may have been involved.

NATO has also been most vicious in areas where substantial fossil fuel reserves exist, or where water is limited and therefore a tool of power, or where other valuable resources exist, along with transportation routes for those resources, and where people strongly resist private banker/corporate rule; ie) where the usual corporate media or economic pressure have been unsuccessful in 'convincing' people to accept foreign or banker/corporate occupation.

"The summit was indeed a War Criminals Summit. Thousands of people gathered in Chicago, from all over, to protest these war criminals. And on the other side, for weeks leading up to the summit, and then as the meeting got underway, the state's forces of repression kicked into high gear.."

I don't think the issue is fundamentally about 'Jihad vs. McCrusade', rather its the inequality of the 1 and 99 percenters. I don't agree with Jihadists, neither do most Muslims nor anyone else. [edited] However that movement is currently a desperate response to occupation by powers imposed by the 1 percent, murder of innocent civilians cannot be justified or used as a means to an end.

I also don't agree that the 'science of evolution' and 'creation' need to be opposed, though the belief that the planet was formed ten thousand years ago is way off- from carbon dated fossil evidence. People could believe in a 'creator' and also believe the creator used the science of evolution to create- in fact many, if not most believers do. Indigenous peoples believe in a Creator (see link from Council of Canadians Great Lakes campaign, citing the First Nations of Ontario declaration.)